Amid Rebellion And Intrigue, Stability Preached

After Confirmation, Russia's New Premier Vows Vote Will Be Held

MOSCOW — Russia's parliament on Monday confirmed Vladimir Putin as prime minister, the troubled nation's fifth head of government in a year and a half.

Putin, 46, a former KGB spy and national security chief, preached stability amid rumors of a Kremlin power grab and fears that fighting by Islamic separatists in the Caucasus region could lead to a war across Russia's south.

"One of the main tasks is to ensure calm and order in the country," Putin told federal deputies, vowing to ensure fair elections when Russia votes for parliament in December and president next summer.

Order may have been the dominant theme of the day from a man who has expressed admiration for Yuri Andropov, another former spy who rose to lead the Soviet Union in the 1980s. But Putin also listed a series of ambitious goals that would sound familiar to anyone paying attention to similar speeches by his recent predecessors.

Putin said Russia must improve its tax system, pay its pension arrears and then increase the payments from the $16 a month that most pensioners receive; strengthen the military; and encourage initiative and free enterprise.

Analysts say Putin will be hard-pressed to outdo previous governments on these deep-seated challenges, particularly as the legislature heads into an election season.

Monday's vote in the Duma, as the parliament's lower house is known, was 233-84. This had less to do with a love of Putin than a desire to avoid an all-out war with the Kremlin that would complicate Duma electoral campaigns.

"The vote's a formality," a deputy said.

Yeltsin nominated Putin a week ago to replace Sergei Stepashin, fired after less than three months on the job. Since March 1998, Yeltsin has sacked four premiers, including the popular Yevgeny Primakov.

Primakov is expected to announce Tuesday that he will join a potentially powerful electoral bloc put together by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Kremlin rivals say Yeltsin and his advisers are scheming to cancel the upcoming elections. Some suggest Yeltsin will use the unrest in the Caucasus republic of Dagestan to declare a nationwide state of emergency and rule that the country is too unstable to go to the polls.

Putin vows that no such plan is in the works. Yeltsin, too, rules it out.

"There will be tough measures in the north Caucasus, and we will restore order there in Dagestan and other regions," Yeltsin said, speaking forcefully in what for him were extended comments to journalists at the Kremlin. "But once again, I state it firmly as president: There will be no state of emergency."

Putin pledged again that the path to a free market would not be abandoned and that he planned no major personnel changes from Stepashin's government.

If some of Putin's words fell in line with those of his predecessors, his style did not.

He spoke most firmly about events in Dagestan, where Islamic separatists led by warlords from Chechnya vow to drive Russian troops out of the republic and set up an independent Muslim state.

Putin voiced the need to "drive the terrorists underground or destroy them." Yet in his most elaborate comments yet on the causes of the Dagestan unrest, Putin also asserted that a military solution was impossible if economic and social issues were not addressed in the Caucasus.

"Chechnya, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia--all these are links in one and the same chain," Putin said. "Unresolved old conflicts inevitably lead to the escalation of new conflicts."